I have three of my collections here for your viewing pleasure. Click on
the thumbnails for a larger image.
The first, a collection of ducks, has been growing since I was born.
Every Easter my Grandparents would get me a duck to display (a kind of
Christmas ornament for Easter). Well, over the years, I amassed a nice
collection of ducks in different poses and temperaments. With such a
nice collection on display friends and family helped add to the flock.
In the photo you can also see my very small collection of decorative
cobalt bottles and some of my high school graduation memorabilia namely
my tassel and '96 keychain.
When I traveled across Europe in 1995 with the Kansas Ambassadors of
Music I thought it was really cool that different countries had
different monies. So I tried to get, in change, one of each of the
different coins from every country I visited. I didn't quite succeed,
but I got a nice array of different coins. We visited England, France,
Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Liechtenstein, and Germany on our two-week
tour.
As with all collections, it is easy to add to them and when I
returned home with my booty, Mom had some "Year Sets" to
add to the stash of cash and I put an American set together with some
extra de-formed coins.
I later discovered that it was illegal to melt pennies with a
propane torch, or twist them like a citrus peel with pliers, or flatten
them with a hydraulic press, but what's done is done and I decided to
display them too.
This collection also stems from my trip to Europe in '95. I picked
up a fun pin from every country and tried to also get one of each
country's flag. Now whenever I visit another state or big city I look
for a pin to show I was there. I guess pins have become my souvenir. I
display them on this Tirolean hat that was given to me by the people of
Austria. The story goes... Since it rained the entire time our group was
in Austria the town council didn't want us to go away with bad feelings
about their city of Seefeld, so they gave us nice felt traditional hats
to keep our noggins dry. This was about midway through the tour and my
bag was getting full of pins, so I stuck them in my hat and wore them,
and a tradition was started.
Here are some pictures of my collection shelf with my glow in the
dark planets mobile and some of my glow-in-the-dark stuff. That's the
other thing that I collect, things that glow-in-the-dark. This
collection is spread out all over my room, so I couldn't take a picture
of the whole collection. Instead I took pictures of a couple of my
glowing pieces. My ceiling is covered with glowing stars, I have a
glowing, inflatable stegasaurus, comets on the ceiling fan, drinking
glasses, buckets, figurines, puzzles, yo-yos and balls.
Let's get back to Matthew's page.
